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Babiana brachystachys
Also called Needleleaf Trumpet Bobbejaantjie
A small South African geophyte (20–30 cm) with a corm, pink-backed cream flowers and grooved, needle-like leaves, native to the sandy dunes of the West Coast. Grow it in sharp, well-drained sand with a dry rest period after flowering.
Babiana brachystachys is a species of geophyte of 20–30 cm (7.9–11.8 in) high that is assigned to the family Iridaceae. It has cream or pale pink, only slightly mirror-symmetrical flowers that are pink on the reverse with a long narrow tube that splits into six tepal lobes, three stamens, a style that divides in three branches opposite the tip of the anthers and line-shaped leaves that are circular in cross section. It is an endemic species of South Africa that can be found on sandy hills and inland dunes in the Northern Cape province. It flowers in September and October.
Babiana brachystachys can be found between Vredendal in the south and Wallekraal, which is about 20 km inland of Hondeklip Bay, in the north. Here it grows near the coast on deep white sands, on hills and inland dunes in the so-called West Coast strandveld, which is part of the Succulent Karoo biome. The flowers of this species look like other Babiana species that have been shown to be pollinated by the long-tongued fly Moegistorhynchus longirostris, but no pollinators have been observed so far. Although mining in the Namaqua Sands area has probably caused two subpopulations to go extinct, this species also grows in strandveld and sandveld vegetations, and only a small part of the dunes have so far been mined. It is therefore considered a least-concern species.
Baboon Root · Babiana angustifolia · Brandvlei Bobbejaantjie · Violet Scent Bobbejaantjie · Pakhuis Bobbejaantjie · Mini Rat Tail Bobbejaantjie · Nama Bobbejaantjie · Pink Bobejaantjie · Limestone Bobbejaantjie · Cederberg Bobbejaantjie · Cinnamon Bobbejaantjie · Sandveld Bobbejaantjie
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Babiana brachystachys by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
